Planning continues in high gear for the 2017 AAPOR Conference. We’re excited to showcase the latest, cutting-edge research on survey and other data collection methods as well as insightful findings from public opinion researchers on pressing issues. An unprecedented number of sessions focus on the election and polling, ensuring the conference will stand at the forefront of scholarship and debate on the 2016 vote and the state of the union.
The AAPOR 2017-2018 Executive Council election closed on March 31 and approximately 33 percent of eligible AAPOR members voted. Please join me in thanking all of our colleagues who stood for election, and in congratulating our new Executive Council members whose terms begin at the upcoming 72nd Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana:
​Jaki McCarthy is a senior survey methodologist in the Methodology Division at the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. She has worked in a number of areas including questionnaire development and testing, data quality evaluation and research, data collection methods, survey participation and nonresponse. But with an academic background in psychology, she is most interested in the impact of people on surveys and statistics.
This will be my last column as AAPOR’s President and it’s been a terrific year for our organization. Here are some of the highlights from my vantage point.
Canada's anti-spam legislation (CASL) came into effect July 1, 2014. It is in place to protect Canadians while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the global marketplace. Beginning July 1, 2017, private individuals and organizations that are affected by a violation of CASL will be able to seek legal redress through civil actions.
AAPOR is currently reviewing and updating its database to ensure compliance with CASL by July 1, 2017.
ResearchHack (RH) is AAPOR’s very own version of the hackathon, originated by software companies to foster collaboration and innovation.
As an association, AAPOR is monitoring issues that have the potential to impact our discipline. AAPOR has co-signed, with many other scholarly and professional societies, a statement written by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in opposition to the recent executive order on immigration. You can find the letter here.
ResearchHack (RH) is AAPOR’s very own version of the hackathon, originated by software companies to foster collaboration and innovation. The focus of RH 3.0 will be the U.S. Census Bureau’s Planning Database (PDB), which provides selected 2010 Census and American Community Survey demographic and socioeconomic estimates at various levels of geography and includes area-level Low Response Score (LRS) estimates. Hackers will be asked to identify possible uses of the PDB in survey research and develop a framework for user-friendly tools/apps to facilitate using the PDB.
AAPOR’s Transparency Initiative committee members are busy conducting current members’ biennial reviews. At this year’s AAPOR conference the TI committee will set up a table in the exhibit hall with the goal of recruiting new members and catching up with existing members. The TI will also have a full panel presentation on Friday May 19 from 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM at this year’s conference. As part of our continued outreach, we would like to focus on one of our charter members – Langer Research Associates – who joined the TI in November 2014.
We have lots of exciting news in the world of AAPOR education!
Registration for the annual conference and short courses are officially open, and the following seven short courses will be offered at the May conference: